I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?

"Once again, humanity's footprints are on the lunar soil, but this time we are here to conquer."

In front of the lawn of the Presidential Palace, with the setting sun behind him, John delivered a televised speech to the nation.

It is now 18:00 Central Time on the 23rd. An hour ago, the "Origin" successfully landed on the moon with the two astronauts of Artemis 3 and conducted extravehicular activities in five minutes.

"The moon is our closest partner, a stepping stone for mankind to go to space or beyond, and an outpost of expansion into space. It has rich resources waiting for us to develop, just like San Francisco in 1830, it is a land full of treasures. of……"

The content of John's speech was impassioned, and the various aerospace highlight images that were switched from time to time were very contagious, making the audience in front of the TV immersed in it.

However, McMaster outside the screen has been distracted, staring intently at the sunset that John used as the background.

The sun showed a kind of glorious magnificence on the horizon, as if it wanted to shine as much as possible over the entire land before going out.

He looked at the sunset and seemed to see the end of the entire human civilization.

It’s just that the sun will rise again after it sets. After the disappearance of human civilization, it will end in death.

“What a beautiful sunset.”

The middle-aged white man standing next to him suddenly spoke, as if he was simply admiring the scenery.

McMaster turned his head tiredly and said softly:

"David, you are more important than us now."

David Ursnow is an astrophysicist and mathematician. He currently serves as the chairman of the sociology department at Princeton University. He is a member of the American Mathematical Society and an academician of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A physicist serving as the chairman of the sociology department should have been the focus of attention, not to mention that the reason why David is famous is more because he is an alien enthusiast - not a group of psychopaths chasing flying saucers everywhere, but A serious scholar who studies extraterrestrial civilizations.

In order to study the possible structure and even language type of aliens, David also spent a lot of time studying cryptography, philosophy and linguistics, and made quite good achievements in all of them.

However, he now has a hidden identity as the director of the "Thirteenth Office" in the Hexagon Building, directly responsible to the president.

A little more than two days are enough for the federal government, which is operating at full speed, to make initial preparations.

An unknown signal was discovered - now referred to as the "M incident". M comes from the initials of Mars. It only took the investigation bureau 8 hours to control all 22 insiders of the M incident, 4 of whom were I heard it through conversation.

At the same time, the agents followed the high-level instructions overnight to look for David who knew both aerospace science and sociology, and preferably also linguistics and encryption. Finally, the agents locked in on David who almost perfectly met the conditions.

Hexagonal Building formed two teams with David as the core and one independently to conduct a systematic analysis of the "M Incident" and both came to conclusive results:

The signal is not sent by humans.

The weird encryption method, disguised as a natural signal, is obviously a characteristic of intelligent life, and it can judge that malicious tendencies are greater than benevolent tendencies.

There can be no goodwill between two strange civilizations for no reason, but there must be enough reasons for malice.

Is it a signal from an unknown probe, spacecraft or something else? Why the sneakiness, why are they doing this, what are they sending? What is their technical level and where are they from?

There are no answers to these questions yet, but it is enough to confirm that "they" exist.

The Hexagon Building named Office Thirteen after the order of M in the alphabet. Thirteen is an ominous symbol in Western history, and it even made the few senior executives who knew about it shudder.

So far, there are less than 30 senior officials and experts who know about the M incident and Office 13, but their levels are already equivalent to those at the highest level.

Obviously, they had no intention of making the M incident public, let alone sharing it with other countries. On the contrary, they immediately sent agents to find out whether the other two European and Arab detectors had received the signal.

After all, there is still a very small probability that Ami will contact aliens in advance and benefit from them.

Only when the truth has to be announced at the last moment can the outside world learn this ultimate secret.

But for McMaster, the first thing he must consider is Ami's safety, and the pressure the aliens put on him is almost unlimited.

On the contrary, David didn't show excessive excitement after learning all this. He was just a little surprised and then looked as if he was expecting it.

"Humanity will eventually have such a day, it's just sooner or later. There's nothing to be surprised about."

This was the first sentence David said when the Thirteenth Office was established, but he could accept any outcome calmly. McMaster and John and other elites could not. In their view, the Federation had begun to shoulder the responsibility of saving the country. The mission of all mankind moves forward.

The world situation is in chaos, but after all, we must rely on the beacon of freedom to guide the direction of civilization!

…

"Why do I feel a little bit compassionate?"

Zhong Cheng looked at the clip of John's speech on his mobile phone and expressed his feelings with some uncertainty.

"Have it?"

Lin Ju on the side was full of questions, but he didn't hear anything.

"Maybe it's my misunderstanding... Actually, I feel more like he is criticizing us. The tone of these words about us is not quite right."

"That's so normal. It's okay if they didn't jump out and scold us for destroying the harmony of the moon."

"Yeah, let's take a look at our spaceship."

It is now 8 o'clock in the morning, and all four astronauts on the Wutu Space Station have entered Jiuzhang and are ready to land at any time.

Artemis 3 completed the landing before them, but no one from the ground to the moon paid much attention, and just concentrated on working according to the plan.

Because the Jiuzhang is large enough and confident in itself, the landing was carried out by four astronauts + three robots, and no astronauts stayed at the Wutu Space Station.

Of course, there are advantages to having more people. Although the landing time this time is short, counting "14", a total of eight laborers plus a large number of auxiliary construction machinery can do quite a lot.

Zhong Cheng’s plan is to stay only for 36 hours, of which the astronauts need to work for a total of 20 hours to complete the arranged tasks. After that, they can return to the space station to have a meal and a good sleep, waiting for the arrival of the subsequent scientific expedition team and preparing for the first mission. Preparation for second login.

At 8:30, the Nine Chapters left the Wutu Space Station.

Lin Ju stood up at the right time and said with a slight pain:

"I'm a little uncomfortable, don't worry about me later."

"What's wrong?"

Zhong Cheng immediately asked with concern.

"Yesterday morning, Manman and I had a spicy hot pot meal. It's been like this all night. I'll find a place to lie down later."

"Then landing..."

"Hey, there's nothing strange about this. It would be interesting if I climbed up there by myself. I'd be vomiting just by looking at it."

Zhong Cheng felt more relieved and quickly gave instructions:

"Xiao Wang, send Chairman Lin to rest quickly. If not, call a doctor immediately. Do you understand?"

"Yes... you come with me, I will help you..."